SarahWalker-Smith

Member of the Board of Governors

Role

Sarah is a chartered accountant with an MBA and thankfully a healthy dose of creativity to balance all that process and logic out! Sarah joined Browne Jacobson LLP as Chief Operating Officer. Previously, she worked for Boots the Chemists as marketing director in 2004, and was recognised the following year with the sector’s award for Best Regional Marketing Director.

Since her move to Browne Jacobson, she has driven internal and external transformation and seen the firm grow organically from £18m to around £70m and counting, opened three new offices, and transformed ways of working at the rest of them whilst growing headcount from 300 to over 950. During that time the firm has also been recognised for its quality and innovation including entry to the Sunday Times Best Places to Work list, being the first UK Law Firm to be accredited with the Investors in Customers award and winning Best Managed Law Firm jointly with legal giant Linklaters; an award which has just been won again in 2016. Internally, she has also been a passionate champion for diversity as a key enabler of change and is chair of the operations board, and alongside the managing partner, runs and is a member of the firm’s strategy board.

Sarah also directs and performs in musicals and has recently started to write them with the express objective of ‘rebalancing the playing field which Shakespeare and co. started’ by creating shows with an abundance of wonderful female roles across the age spectrum. She produced her first musical this October at the Contemporary Gallery in Nottingham.

Sarah, a wife and mum of two, is a passionate believer that you can ‘have your cake and eat it’ if you find your purpose and find ways to make your life centre on it; blurring the boundaries between the professional and personal.